1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generaly relates to a resuscitation process of animal fibers, more particularly, to a process for resuscitating natural crimps inherent in the animal fibers, retaining and recovering fluffy and soft touch, removing foul odor peculiar to the animal fibers, and preventing parasitism of insects and growth of mold.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Animal fibers such as feather, wool and mohair have long been for use in bedding, clothings, carpets and the like. Above all, feather and wool have excellent heat retaining property, lightweight, soft touch and the like and therefore have been in widespread use for high-grade bedding in recent years. Wool has natural crimps having superior heat retaining property and soft touch, but is normally subjected to a crimp processing then supplied for practical use. Although the crimp processing is attained by physical or chemical treatment, it involves a fatal drawback of injuring fibers per se and thus damaging durability.
Moreover, the animal fibers contain protains such as keratin as a major ingredient so that they emit foul odor inherent in proteins when ventilation is poor. For deodorization and degreasing, surface active agents are used in greater amounts but those not only damage fibers, but require a great quantily of water for washing to thus raise problems in equipment and cost. Still worse, waste water after washing leads to environmental pollution.